There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.
ALAIN DE BOTTONLiterature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others – because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
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A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.
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Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you’re human.
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We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.
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It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
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to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
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Not everyone is worth listening to.
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Differ though we might with Christianity’s view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis.
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Which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.
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Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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